R help - Oct 2010 - help -> RE: Download.file problem

Dear R-helpers ... any thoughts on the below issue ... will help me complete
a small project!


Strange problem with download.file . for non existent URL an empty file is
created but I am not able to delete the without shutting down R

Example:
> download.file("http://test.com/test.txt","test.txt")
trying URL 'http://test.com/test.txt'
Error in download.file("http://test.com/test.txt",
"test.txt") :
  cannot open URL 'http://test.com/test.txt'
In addition: Warning message:
In download.file("http://test.com/test.txt", "test.txt") :
  cannot open: HTTP status was '404 Not Found'

If you go to working directory through windows explorer, you can see the
empty file test.txt but try deleteting the file and it says that the file is
locked.

I tried closeAllConnections() but of no use.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
S

On 18/10/2010 8:34 PM, Santosh Srinivas wrote:
> Dear R-helpers ... any thoughts on the below issue ... will help me
complete
> a small project!
>
>
> Strange problem with download.file . for non existent URL an empty file is
> created but I am not able to delete the without shutting down R
>
> Example:
>
>>
download.file("http://test.com/test.txt","test.txt")
>
> trying URL 'http://test.com/test.txt'
> Error in download.file("http://test.com/test.txt",
"test.txt") :
>    cannot open URL 'http://test.com/test.txt'
> In addition: Warning message:
> In download.file("http://test.com/test.txt",
"test.txt") :
>    cannot open: HTTP status was '404 Not Found'
>
> If you go to working directory through windows explorer, you can see the
> empty file test.txt but try deleteting the file and it says that the file
is
> locked.
>
> I tried closeAllConnections() but of no use.
>
> Any suggestions?
Suggestion:  Don't try to download a nonexistent file to a filename that 
you care about.  It looks like a bug in download.file is leaving the 
file open; Windows won't let you delete open files.

So you could download to tempfile() first to see if it works; if that 
fails, you'll be left with a junk file open, but it will be closed when 
R quits.

If you want to help, you could look through the internal code to figure 
out why the file isn't being closed, and submit a patch.

Duncan Murdoch